Tender
by cuddlesome
Summary: Rey falls under Kylo Ren's "care" once more. Sequel to Prison Food.
1. Chapter 1

Rey spent most of her life starving. Whether it was because she could not find any scrap worthwhile or Unkar Plutt felt like making her miserable, portions were often scarce. She had become used to being too weak to realize her own debilitating thirst, what little rangy muscle she built up during her climbs on felled starships wasting away, and the relentless fatigue driving her to want to curl up on a sand dune somewhere to die.

She never did, of course; she had to survive so her family would find her. They would take care of her. They would hold her and love her and make sure she never had to be hungry again. They had to.

It is insulting, revolting, even, that Kylo Ren constitutes one of the handful of people that ended up caring for Rey instead. Certainly, Rey puts Finn and Han and Chewie and Leia and a lot of other people besides ahead of Kylo Ren on that list, but the fact remains that he is on it at all.

His was a sick, twisted sort of care, involving imprisoning her, forcing more food than she ever got in weeks on Jakku down her throat, and pressing his lips to the bruises that he himself had wrought on her.

And now, it seems, she is about to experience his special brand of care once more as the monster isolates her from her friends with the intention to abduct her.

Rey knows that she should not have broken off from the main assault against the First Order when they attacked the Resistance on D'Qar. She knows that she should not have caught sight of the blood red flash of Kylo Ren's crackling lightsaber in the heat of battle and run toward it rather than away.

The sounds of battle disappear into the distance and then all but cease completely with only the faint echo of explosions to signify its existence. As she follows him, she tries in vain to keep quiet, unused to having to sneak around on the jungle floor rather than yielding sand. She cannot seem to go more than a few steps without breaking a twig or crushing a mass of leaves, but he never turns around.

Worsening her awareness of how much noise she makes is her stomach, which cannot seem to go more than a few minutes without churning and gurgling to remind her it has not gotten the allotted meals she has become used to. Rey digs her fist into her middle. The idea of eating before battle made her nauseous, so she had skipped out on her meals for the past couple of days after they received intelligence about the attack.

Finn, Poe, and other Resistance fighters had noticed, of course, and they tried to offer her food. Rey could not bring herself to tell them how sick it made her feel to have someone hold out offerings of nourishment to her. Their hands were suddenly covered in black. Ribbed sleeves stretched out over the bottoms of their palms. They were not content to wait for her to accept the food but rather prize her jaws open and force it all down, making her taste acrid leather in addition to the food. She felt bile sting in the back of her throat. She started to make a habit of only ever eating by herself in her room, but with the impending battle she could not even manage to do that much.

Rey reasoned at the time that the hunger would keep her sharp, as it had on Jakku. On the contrary, she feels sluggish and a dizzy, as though she wades through a bog after a nightmare personified.

And then Kylo Ren turns around. Rey draws her lightsaber, but he does not yet respond in kind. Instead, he looks her up and down much in the same way he did during their first meeting.

"Scavenger."

His distorted voice may not allow for much of his tone to seep through, but Rey can feel his pleasure at seeing her in a soft gush of the Force. She fights the urge to rub away the gooseflesh that breaks out on her upper arms. Being able to sense others' feelings in her mind as if they were her own, the ability to read him even with his ghastly mask on; it still disturbs her even after all of Master Skywalker's training.

He tilts his helm. "Nothing to say?"

Rey scowls at him and turns on her lightsaber, readying a fighting stance. "I'm not interested in talking to a monster."

Kylo Ren's fingers curl into half-formed fists. Rey does not need the Force to realize he is irritated with her continual denial to recognize him as human. That is a feeling he will have to get used to.

He draws his lightsaber. They fight, then, and for a moment Rey can put aside her memories of what had happened between them before. Not Takodana with his initial kidnapping of her, not Starkiller where he kept her prisoner and force-fed her, nothing. There is only the next step, the next swing of her saber, the next attempt to cut him down so he can never hurt her or anyone else ever again.

And then Kylo nails her in the stomach with a well-placed shove of his elbow midway through one of his lightsaber spins and Rey is reminded of how much it hurts. She coughs up a mouthful of bile as she staggers back. Kylo does not take advantage of the huge vulnerability. Instead he looks on with what Rey can only guess is curiosity and—and—?

The Force makes the presence of feelings of compassion he exudes clear as transparisteel.

It sickens her. Why? Why did he have compassion for her, of all people? Why not Finn or—her eyes prickle for a moment—Han?

Rey has a headache. She cannot decide if it is the hunger or the Force at work, but her head pounds as if it has switched places with her heart. The incessant whir of her lightsaber and the inconsistent, garbled crackle of his does not help matters. The light causes spots behind her eyes. She cannot concentrate. She slips and nearly impales herself with one of Kylo Ren's quillons. He steps back, saving her from driving herself into the beam.

"Oh, stop it!" She snaps as she attempts to gather herself. "Fight me like you want to kill me or you'll never win."

That was how she had always fought on Jakku. How she had fought him on Starkiller, for that matter, up until the last moment when something stopped her. Perhaps it was how pitiful he looked. Perhaps it is how pitiful she looks right now that stays his own bloodlust.

"I do not want to kill you. I never have."

Rey is interrupted before she can make a retort by her stomach growling again. She cannot help but hunch over and grab at her stomach. After so many years of starvation, she thought that she would be able to cope with hunger better, but it only took a short while of semi-regular meals before her body could no longer handle the severity without them.

Rey looks back up at Kylo Ren to see him approaching her at a fast rate and she hopes he has not chosen now to take her advice. Startled, she makes a wild stab in his direction. He parries it with insulting ease, then twists his wrist. The lightsaber flips out of her hand to land on the ground a ways away. Rey readies herself to call it with the Force. Kylo grabs the hand that she extends to do so. She wants to turn and attempt to dive away from him to free herself, but she finds that her body has been immobilized.

No, no, not again.

Rey fights the urge to panic. Master Skywalker taught her how to get around this trick. She just has to—it is only a matter of—

Kylo Ren is close. Too close. She sees her parted lips, her sweat-slicked face, her wide eyes in the chromium outline of his visor.

Thinking properly with him in her face is impossible.

Rey can smell him. Sweaty and ashy. She remembers being made to wear his putrid capelet as the only barrier between him and her naked body. The softness of it belied its rough, harsh appearance.

Kylo turns over her wrist so that the veiny underside faces him. His hands are enormous to the point of him being able to close one of them around her entire arm. Is she too emaciated or is he too inhumanly enormous? It is probably a combination of both.

He deactivates his lightsaber, clips it to his belt, and uses his freed hand to trace the bones that stand out in her hand and arm. "The Resistance has not been feeding you."

They had tried, she wants to protest. They had tried their best. There is something wrong with her, not them.

And they had at no point forced her to eat drugged food. Or forced kisses and wandering touches onto her. Or choked her.

"I would never have you fight in this condition," he says, reaching out further to run his fingers up her side.

Kylo stops when her stomach gives another sound of protest. He fans his fingers out across her middle. In an expression of the miniscule range of movement she is allowed, the muscles in her abdomen clench beneath his touch. His reach is so big, Rey has no doubt he could crush all of her innards to a pulpy mess of blood and gastric acid in his fist. He does not, of course, instead going for the far gentler and thereby far more repulsive gesture of rubbing her sunken belly affectionately. He reaches up with both hands to cup the sides of her face. Her vision is filled with his mask as he leans in toward her until there is nothing else to see.

"I will take far better care of you than them." He says it like a promise.

Just before he knocks her out with an overwhelming concentration of the Force, Rey wonders how much sicker he will end up making her.


	2. Chapter 2

Rey awakens to the smell of cooked root vegetables, meat, herbs, and the feel of fingers pressed to the indents between her ribs through her shirt.

Her first instinct is to sink her fingernails into Kylo's wrists and wrench him off—because she knows it must be him without thinking, she can feel his presence—but her hands are bound behind her back and subsequently crushed beneath her because she is lying down. Based on the numbness and closeness of her ankles, they are bound as well.

The next instinct is to pretend she is still asleep, but given that his hands are right over her lungs he probably felt the change in her breathing pattern the moment she regained consciousness.

Rey settles for opening her eyes so she can at the very least see her attacker. She immediately wishes she had not. With it comes the realization that Kylo Ren has his knees on either side of her hips, his body all but on top of her, surrounding her.

He is not wearing his mask. Rey finds her eyes drawn to the scar, despite knowing that she will not like what she sees, just as if it were a gory accident on the side of the road. She cannot disguise her wince at the grisly sight. She feels sick knowing that she had disfigured someone that way. Even someone as horrid as him.

"Good morning," he says as if he does not see exactly where her gaze rests on his face.

Kylo bares his teeth in what Rey thinks might be a smile. It could also be a snarl. He must be out of practice with looking happy. If he can even feel real happiness beyond schadenfreude.

Regardless, Rey wants to punch every one of his teeth out.

The rest of his face looks worse for wear, too. What little color his skin had is gone, made especially evident by the gray smudged beneath his eyes. His hair is less of an elaborate mess and instead simply a mess, hanging in lank chunks over his forehead. His cheekbones stick out more than she remembered. He looks sick. He would look dead were it not for the perverse spark in his deep brown eyes.

For the first time, Rey wonders about how unwell he must have been while recovering from his injuries. Whether he had suffered the way she had—or worse—during his mending from the mental trauma in addition to the physical.

Then she remembers he is Kylo Ren and he does not deserve her pity.

Rey looks cursorily around the rest of the room. What little of it she can see with a huge, beastly man blocking out most of her vision, anyway. It is not a prison cell, but it may as well be. No other furniture that she can see save for a side table out of the corner of her eye. No windows. One door, made of wood, of all things. She gets the sense from the sparsity of the room juxtaposed with the fine materials and archaic door that she is in an ancient building somewhere. Probably on a planet and not a ship, then. She prays that the planet is nothing like Starkiller Base.

Rey has her attention drawn back to Kylo when one of his hands leaves her ribs to reach out of Rey's line of sight, somewhere off to one side behind her head where the side table is. She realizes that he has discarded his gloves, showing off pale, long fingers extending from his ribbed sleeves, looking less like dark spider's legs and more like sun bleached bones.

His hand returns with the source of what she had smelled the moment she woke up: a bowl of stew. It is sanguine red and thick. Kylo looks down at her through the flow of steam that curls from it. The stew's aroma had mostly masked the stink that she has come to associate with his body. Her stomach rumbles.

The look on Kylo's face tells her that she is going to eat every last bite of it. The knot that forms in her stomach despite its hunger at the very idea tells her otherwise.

He takes his other hand off of her ribcage and reaches for her mouth with the clear intention of forcing it open. Rey's jaw clenches, but she opens her mouth up wide before he can lay a finger on her.

Kylo tilts his head, his fingers hovering over her open mouth. His thumb slides across her lower lip, then pushes it down. It is as if he is trying to get a rise. She refuses to satisfy him, pushing down the instinctive urge to bite. He almost seems disappointed that she is not interested in retaliating against him. At least, not yet.

"I'm not in the mood to fight. I'm hungry," Rey explains, then shuts her eyes, leaving her mouth open as if she is a fledgling.

Rey knows she will get her chance to strike out at him, just like before, but she cannot do it at the detriment of her own escape. She is still bound. For now, she can lay back and suffer through his affections. May as well make it easier on herself by not resisting if he only meant to feed her rather than read her mind. The mere thought of suffering through him forcing open her mouth and holding her down while she struggled sent her to dark places, besides.

Rey would bide her time, and then she would make him pay. She comforts herself with thoughts of how sick she had made him when she held him at knifepoint, overfed him, and drugged him before escaping her cell on Starkiller. That much helps her feel a little better about him feeding her now.

The only problem is… he is not giving her the food.

Rey opens her eyes and shuts her mouth to see him continuing to look down at her. His great size and power over her does not seem all that intimidating when he looks so mystified.

"I see you have no suspicions about me drugging this," he says, indicating the bowl with a dip of his head.

Truth be told, the thought has not even occurred to Rey. She fought him tooth and nail about feeding her drugged food on Starkiller, but that had been especially prominent in her mind because drugged gruel was all that the stormtroopers served her for an extended period.

Would he be so cruel as to claim to care so deeply about her well-being only to drug her? That did sound like something a monster would do.

Nevertheless, Rey's only answer is to adopt her expectant, open-mouthed look again. She can pretend to trust him for now. And if she detects any drugs, well, she will not swallow.

Kylo hesitates for only a moment longer before he puts one hand behind her head, fingers spread between two of the three knots of hair tied there. Rey shudders at the idea of his hand being so close to her mind, but none of the stabbing pain that accompanies a mind probe arises. He tilts her head up a fraction and then the lip of the bowl is pressed to Rey's open mouth.

She feels like a half-aware hospital patient being fed by an orderly. The humiliation of the position is tempered somewhat when she gets a mouthful of stew. It does not scald her tongue, but it is hot enough to be painful. That aside, it is palatable in spite of the distinct gaminess. There are no immediately obvious tastes to indicate drugs, either, though they could just be well-disguised. In any event, she will go so far as to think that the stew is… good. Rey knows from experience that hunger makes everything taste good. Even long since expired vegmeat and portions that had been maliciously torn open and resealed once they were mixed with sand looked appetizing after a while.

Rey's eyelids crumple a bit further as she forces herself to swallow the first bit of food she has had in days. There is no time for her to even consider the discomfort of the slosh of warm liquid in her gurgling stomach; another swallow follows rapidly afterward. Soon enough, her stomach is fuller than it has been in a while. A dull ache starts to overwhelm the pleasant stretch of being full. She gulps down as many more mouthfuls as she can, then opens her eyes the tiniest bit to see how much of a difference she has made.

From what she can tell, it is not much. It becomes very apparent after a few more draughts that her stomach is close to bursting and there is still more than half of the stew left.

Mistake. Going along with his whims was a mistake.

With her hands behind her back, Rey has very little way to signal to Kylo that she needs him to stop. She doubted he would even if she did. So she jerks her head to one side and allows hot stew to splatter on her chin and neck for a moment. She has suffered far worse heat than this. Kylo curses and lifts the bowl away, setting it down on the side table. He turns back to her with definite anger burning in his eyes, threatening and overwhelming.

"I'm full," Rey says plainly in response to his glare.

"You've said that before," Kylo spits, baring his teeth in what is most certainly a snarl, "and I managed to get you to eat more, then, too."

Yes, and he had been lucky not to make her guts rupture and kill her right then and there.

Kylo mops away some of the stew on her face with the side of his hand and licks it off. Then he seems to get a better idea, judging by the quirk to his lips. He leans down to lick up the mess right from the source. He is deliberately sloppy, hitting upon areas where he has already cleaned the spillage from over and over—particularly her lips. Rey squirms, attempting to turn away from his tongue, which is just as slimy and broad and velvety as she remembers. One of his hands reaches up to pin her head in place until he finishes. She protests and writhes a bit, but there is little she can do.

He kisses her neck in between licks. It feels good. She hates it so much.

Even after Kylo has cleaned her up, he seems to have forgotten his endeavor to feed her with his absorption in touching her. Rey jerks her head up as his thumbnail runs along where he had bruised her neck when he had her imprisoned. He murmurs that she has healed nicely. Rey's guts churn. The marks had stayed for a couple of weeks. She took to wearing high-collared shirts to avoid questioning from Resistance fighters, or, far worse, pitying glances and slight shakes of the head.

Her eyes land on the region of his neck where she thinks she may have skimmed the skin with the lightsaber before it caught on his face. If only she had cut a little deeper.

Kylo leans down to press his plump lips to the side of her neck in another kiss. Rey knows she should twist her head, bite through the cloth and sinew and rip a hole in him so he will choke on his own blood. Instead, she attempts to ignore the rise of heat in her when he takes the skin of her neck between his teeth and sucks on it.

After a time, Kylo lets go with a wet noise and a smack of his lips. He smears the remaining saliva away with the pad of his thumb. Rey shudders. It feels cold. She almost prefers the hot stew.

"Perfect," he murmurs.

Rey disagrees. She feels anything but.


	3. Chapter 3

Kylo stays on top of Rey a bit longer after he tires of licking her, laying some of his crushing weight more thoroughly on top of her. The situation is evocative to Rey of a predator lounging after falling asleep with mangled prey in its paws and its snout resting halfway in cooling entrails. She cannot be so fortunate as to have him fall asleep, though. No, he remains very aware, made apparent by his occasional pet at the side of her face, her hair, and the now warm and swollen curve of her belly. He lingers on the last, as she has come to expect.

Single-minded obsession, Rey has come to realize, is a keystone in Kylo Ren's personality. Whether it is his grandfather, BB-8, or her, he seems to have an endless drive once he fixates on something. And that something just so happens to be feeding her. Rey might be able to appreciate the sentiment more if he did not insist on gorging her until her belly got so painfully full or if he resisted the urge to fawn over the resulting bulge as if she has swollen to the early stages of pregnancy.

With that, an outlandish, terrifying idea occurs to Rey: perhaps that is it. Perhaps he fantasizes about how her belly will feel rounded with his children. Rey's gorge rises. She will never carry little monsters to term for him.

No, no, she will not even let him get close enough to touch, let alone—

Rey swallows the bile tinged with the stew in her throat as if choking down especially nasty medicine. She struggles and remembers her bound wrists and ankles. She is at his mercy if he chooses to defile her.

Kylo has become oddly still. Rey glances up at him and realizes he wears a look on his face as if she has struck him, a look of shock and hurt.

"I wouldn't," Kylo whispers, drawing his entire body back.

She realizes what he has done and her disgust at him flares.

"Keep out of my head," Rey says, attempting to squirm away a bit with his weight off of her.

With her chained wrists and ankles, she does not get very far. He pins her with one of his massive paws on the center of her chest and holds her in place.

"Do you truly believe that I would violate you like that?" Kylo leans down until their faces are parallel.

As far as Rey is concerned, Kylo has already violated her in more ways than one. Whether it was with ethereal fingers raking through her brain or a very physically present set of leather clad fingers jammed between her teeth, he had touched her in more ways than she would have thought anyone ever would. Her mind and her stomach are both wrecks, she has developed worse eating habits than she ever had on Jakku, and she is a paranoid mess, all thanks to him. Is it such a leap in logic to assume he would not have any trouble shoving himself inside of her and adding her womb to the list of things he has ruined?

Rey does not know where he draws the line when it comes to hurting her.

Kylo presses down on her chest, angry desperation screwing up his features. The scar crumples in on itself at the center of his cheek as he snarls. He looks like he is about to have a fit, with Rey as the object of his anger.

Rey, for her part, gags. The liquid still very much present in her esophagus gets forced upward by his pressing. She only just manages to keep from spitting up the meal he had just fed her on his hand. The huge brute seems to understand he is hurting her, for once, and he takes his hand off of her even as his other hand twists in the bedsheets next to her head.

She takes the next moment to project her thoughts at full volume. He kidnapped her twice, now, shoved food down her throat with the caveat that it was for her own good, touched her, kissed her, licked her, not even bothering to have an attempt at an explanation for why he did as much—was it so unreasonable for her to assume he would at some point make it escalate even farther?

"I won't take you."

The hard edge of his anger is not even close to being gone. Nevertheless, he becomes more subdued than she might have expected considering she all but accused him of entertaining thoughts of raping her. For a blissful second, Rey is relieved. Then Kylo continues:

"No, you'll give yourself to the dark side, to the First Order, and to me."

Finally, his anger dissipates, but it is in favor of something far scarier. The soft, dreamy pleasure makes Rey feel sick all over again when put in correspondence with him speaking of her absolute surrender. He smiles his father's crooked smile and his eyes narrow with his mother's sureness. Rey shuts her eyes. Her stomach roils. How had two good people given life to someone so bestial?

"You will stop resisting. Trust me." A stray lock of his hair tickles her neck and his mouth is all but on hers. "It's only a matter of time. You cannot hide your true feelings from me, Rey."

Rey's breath catches. He has never said her name before. It sounds at once profane and reverent coming from his mouth. How long has he known it? She never told him. Then the answer comes to her and she feels stupid—he ripped it from her mind just like everything else. She, on the other hand, had learned his noms de guerre from his mother. "Kylo Ren" suits the hulking monster that seeks her ruination, she thinks, much more than the real name she had heard his father call out to him on that fateful day.

She wonders why, then, what she ends up saying when she opens her eyes and looks straight into his is: "I'll never give myself over to evil like you did, Ben, no matter how much you restrain or torture me."

Kylo draws back, shock writ large over his features. His face crumples back into anger in short order, but he does not react by attacking her as she half-hopes to justify her accusation. Rather, he rips himself away from her, stumbles off of the bed, and stomps over to the archaic door. He rips it open, slamming it into the wall, then pauses. He looks over his shoulder at Rey with wrath smoldering in his eyes and his teeth bared in a way that reminds her of a predator again, though few predators run from their subdued prey. She wonders dimly what part of the family he got that look from. With a flick of his one of his hand, the locks on Rey's restraints click open. Kylo storms out of the door and shuts it. The heavy clunk of locks on the other side shifting into place mix with his booted stomps as he leaves.

Rey sits up, staring at the door, half-expecting him to come back. The sound of his retreat—for that is what it is, no matter how much he tries to disguise it with his irate display—fades. She scared him off by hitting on a sore spot, just as she had tapped into his insecurity regarding Darth Vader on Starkiller. Rey allows herself a moment to savor her victory as she pries the bindings from her wrists and ankles, rubbing feeling back into them. She surmises after little examination that the cuffs have little use as short range weapons as they are not very heavy and Kylo is sure to deflect them if she uses them as projectiles. Still, she is freer than she was before. Rey tries not to think too hard about the logistics of why he took them off. If he thinks the little gesture will change her judge of his character, he could not be more wrong.

Her stomach settles a bit with Kylo gone, making her feel more like she swallowed a rock than anything else. That is, unless she moves too much, in which case the stew reminds her with a great deal of sloshing of its liquid state. Rey looks over at the remainder of stew on the side table, wondering whether or not it would save. The scavenger in her is concerned about wasting food. She scoffs, trying to tell herself it does not matter, Kylo Ren probably has a multitude of food and servants to cook it in… wherever this is. She plans to let it sit and rot just as she had the gruel the First Order had provided her with during her first capture.

Instead, she goes about trying to formulate a plan to get something to defend herself with. The wooden side table is bolted to the floor. With that factor, there is no way she can make a weapon of it by shattering it to splintered pieces by throwing it against a wall. She does not trust that she would be able to kick it apart in her unenforced boots without injuring her feet, either. Managing to beat Kylo in a fight and escaping the room will mean nothing if she cannot walk.

Discouraged but not defeated, Rey paces around the room, trying to find anything in the barrenness that she can use. A bucket sits in one corner. She had not noticed it at first because it had been concealed by the bed. Her lip curls as she surmises its intended use. She has had worse places to relieve herself, she supposes, but the commodities refreshers offered in the Resistance had been nice to get used to. The single modern fixture, a rectangular flush mount light in the ceiling, is out of her reach, so she tosses the bucket and her unlocked restraints at it. There is a harsh noise with the impact on the transparisteel, but the light shows no sign of breakage anytime soon even after a half a dozen tosses. As a last ditch effort, even though she knows it will be useless, Rey tries the door. Predictably, it does not budge. Throwing her slight weight against it only makes her feel nauseous.

Soon enough, she runs out of ideas and there is nothing for her to think about but the pain in her stomach.

Sullen, Rey sits back down on the side of the bed and lays a hand on top of her middle. It aches. The gnawing, rumbling hunger is gone, but in its place is a dull, stretched throbbing and occasional gurgles. She so rarely had an issue with being overfull that she has no idea what to do about it.

Rey recalls one instance she can distinctly remember being stuffed to this point outside of Kylo Ren's capture. She had saved up a store of portions after being the first to discover a starship partway wedged beneath the Crackle. Digging her way beneath the hot, blackened glass with rudimentary tools was exhausting, but the resulting slew of untouched pieces to sell to Unkar Plutt made it seem worth it. That is, until she started getting attacked by other scavengers who had witnessed or spread rumors about the vast amount of portions she attained from her haul. Her solution ended up being to eat it all at once and make a show of scattering the empty packaging around the collapsed AT-AT she lived in. The portion bread, already unappetizing on a good day, started to taste like soggy lumps of cloth. All of her instincts told her to stop, but she ate every bit. She stopped being attacked after she scattered the trash nearby, but her stomach was a rock hard swell with the result of a single day's feast that should have lasted her weeks. It was a complete waste and she felt miserable. The only way she had been able to stop the pain was to sleep it off.

Rey is terrified by the idea of an angry Kylo returning to find her vulnerable, but she sees few other options at the moment. She has no tools, no weapons, and no way of communicating with anyone. The only thing she has at her disposal is—

Rey smacks her forehead with the heel of one hand. The Force! Obviously, she can use the Force to get help. She heard countless stories about Jedi using the Force to communicate long distances. Master Skywalker himself had been saved in Cloud City after calling out to Leia. Yes, that had been a much shorter distance than how far away she probably is from her friends, but it is a shred of hope she can cling to.

She is not so caught up in the idea that she acts on it right away. Kylo will sense it. Even though she had never been explicitly told as much, she can feel deep in her sickened gut that he will know and stop her. For now, she will have to play prisoner and put up with him until she can at the very least escape the room before she calls for help.

With this in mind, Rey lays down on her side, uncomfortable with the way her stomach bears down on her or is squashed in alternative positions. It could be worse, she supposes, thinking back to her fears about him molesting her. It could always be worse.


	4. Chapter 4

Out of some sort of morbid habit, Rey starts making tallies with her fingernails in a space behind the bed where Kylo cannot see them if she pushes it just so. As the days turn into weeks and the weeks turn into months, Rey starts to wonder if she will ever have her opportunity to escape him. Her only comfort can be found in the Force, something she is wary of tapping into for too long at a time.

Unlike before, there are no stormtroopers that attend her. There is only Kylo. That would be fine, as she fooled Kylo himself during her escape on Starkiller, but he has grown more wary of her and is not so easily tricked by her. Attempts to appeal to his perversions are met with interest, yes, but there is always an underlying doubt.

He is right to be suspicious. Rey remains flinty inside even as her outsides begin to soften in the wake of her warden's overfeeding and her inability to get much exercise in the confined space. Having more than lean muscle on her body is an alien concept to Rey. She knows she must have had some baby fat clinging to her as a very small child, but Jakku whittled her down to a skeleton with skin and muscle stretched taut over it.

In Kylo's hands, Rey's hard edges are smoothed out with flesh. As sickened as Rey is by even the smallest of changes, she recognizes that at first she is by no means exceedingly plump and nowhere near obese. It is just a little. A bit of flesh to cushion her belly to protect her organs and generally bulk her up is a good thing. It would have been a godsend on Jakku. If anything, he has done what he has set out to do: taking care of her by putting her at a healthy weight. The only problem is that he has shown no signs of stopping. To make matters worse, there are days where he does not keep up his air of concern for her welfare, where it is clear to Rey he is only in it for his own pleasure.

In one such instance, Kylo arrives after neglecting to visit her for a day, leaving her with just a jug of water. Rey says nothing when he walks in, but she cannot suppress the rumble in her stomach when she smells the hearty meal of potatoes and some sort of meat dish. She also spots some of her favorite fruits alongside it.

Her stomach has felt like it has been eating itself in the wake of the sudden lack of care. Her mouth fills with saliva at the sight of him. She swallows it, wondering whether or not he knows how well he has her trained. How he has managed to make her crave his presence if only for the food he brings with him.

Kylo's arrogance bleeds through the Force in heavy gouts. Oh, yes, he knows very well what power he holds.

Kylo sits down on the edge of the bed and sets the plate of food in his lap. Rey walks over to stand in front of him. Kylo glances down at the floor, then back at her. Rey catches his meaning immediately.

"No," she says between her teeth.

Kylo shrugs and lifts a slice of the meat into his mouth. A bit of blood mixed with the dark sauce oozes out of the corner of his lips as he bites down. The squelching as he chews and the heavy gulp as he swallows seems to echo in the tiny room. Rey drools again. He eats another piece, then another, then takes a bite out of a pear. Rey is not so foolish as to believe he will not eat it all in front of her just to prove a point.

He stops when she kneels on the cell's floor before him. Kylo has not bound her wrists and ankles since that first day, seeming to trust that she will accept what he offers. And, despite how embarrassed and childish she feels, she does. She obeys his unspoken instruction not to reach out with her hands for the food but instead allow him to cut it into little bites before he holds it out to her between his forefinger and thumb. The portions do not even come close to being full mouthfuls. Rey grinds the tiny scraps of meat between her back teeth in an attempt to eke out every last bit of flavor, but there is little she can do to draw out the nibbles of potato. Her stomach eagerly accepts the pathetic offerings that deviate from the heavy slosh of water.

Rey is weak enough with hunger to accept the humiliation up until the moment that Kylo reaches up with his free hand to stroke the top of her head. She chomps down on the fingers outstretched toward her mouth despite knowing from experience they will not pierce his glove and gives his hand a firm shake. It only strikes her after the fact that she has just behaved like a dog. Kylo catches the thought and gives her a smile dripping with slime.

"Bad girl," he says as he reaches back with the hand he had used to pet her to grab a hold of the topmost of her hair buns and yanks. "Don't you know better than to bite the hand that feeds you?"

Rey's jaw loosens its grip as she cries out. The glove she had bitten down on has a shiny coating of spit that Kylo smears across one of her cheeks. She shudders.

"Are you going to be good, Rey?" Kylo puts aside the plate of food and stands, forcing her to get to her feet as well as he holds tight on her hair.

Rey hisses through her teeth as tears begin to prickle at her eyes. She does not trust herself to speak. It will no doubt just end in a sob.

"Maybe you didn't know this, savage girl, but guests aren't supposed to bite their hosts. You've done it time and time again… haven't you learned better? Haven't I been a good teacher?" He asks it like he believes he has been doing a great job of taking care of her instead of torturing her.

Her hands hang limp at her sides. Ironically enough, the tiny scraps of food provided to her only seem to have sharpened her hunger. She feels weaker than ever. For once, the hatred broiling inside of her cannot be backed up by her physical strength.

Kylo mistakes her inaction for submission. He lets go of her hair and strokes her cheek, shushing her. Rey swallows hard and flinches when he kneels to pick her up. He sits back down on the bed with her resting sideways in his lap, then offers her the plate of food. After a moment spent staring, smelling the salty, rich aroma coming off of the rapidly cooling hot food, she reaches out with one hand. Kylo's glare makes her lower it. Reluctantly, she leans forward and hovers her face near it as she takes indiscriminately huge bites of the uncut meat. She ends up with sauce on her cheeks and chin. The gamey taste is not quite disguised by that same sauce, so she cuts it by turning to take a chomp out of the pear. Juices run down her chin and mix with the sauce. She feels like an especially messy Happabore as her tongue flicks out to swipe away the worst of the mess. She is too hungry to care. She knows she has to take advantage of the rare opportunity to eat on her own terms even if Kylo's hands seem almost nice in comparison to having the edge of a hard plate cutting into her cheek.

Rey does not look at Kylo as she eats, but she cannot help but feel him. He has left the plate suspended in the air with the Force to free up his hand so that he can probe her body with his fingers. Her legs, her hips, the curve of her ass, all get petted and prodded and pinched. Rey finishes nudging away the cores of fruits with her chin and licking the plate clean as he gets to the last. She accordingly tenses and levels a glare at him.

The look he gives her is strange and yearning. Without contemplating the consequences, Rey reaches out with the Force and skims the surface of his thoughts. Luckily for her, Kylo accepts the intrusion in his mind openly. Less luckily, his notions disturb her.

The basic core of his thoughts is simple, really: he thinks she has gotten heavier. He felt it when he picked her up. He can feel it now as he squeezes her ass. Rey bristles at his other thoughts; that she is more pliant, just like he thinks she has become more submissive to him.

He could not be more wrong. Any amount of flesh seems like a lot on her body. It is only been a couple of months, according to her tallies. There is no way that he managed to—

Kylo lays his palm on her belly just as he had done when he first caught sight of her on D'Qar and presses down. There is undeniable softness to her middle. Far, far more than she thought. He pushes her shirt up and Rey allows it mostly because she has gone numb. He can pinch a sizeable amount of her belly between his fingers and jiggle the flesh with a slap. Rey lowers her head and looks at the little gut that she has acquired, one that has become glaringly obvious with her sitting down alongside love handles. With it comes the realization that her thighs are straining at her pant seams and her shirt is tight across her swollen breasts. All the delusions that the changes she had managed to pointedly ignore or assure herself were not as extreme as she thought up were shattered with Kylo's thoughts and touch.

He fattened her up. She allowed herself to become his spoiled little pet, just as she swore not to. Somewhere along the line she had stopped pretending to go along with his sick wishes and actually begun to do it without thoughts of opposition that she ever acted on.

The fact that she has become more than a little chubby is not what upsets Rey. It is that he, Kylo Ren, her disgusting, perverse, murderous enemy was the one to physically change her into something else. Rather than her friends helping her come to maintain a steady enough diet to put on weight, she apparently required being locked up in a cell and force fed.

"What is wrong with me?" Rey whispers as Kylo rubs his palms over her churning stomach.

"Nothing," Kylo says, kissing the soft, full curve of her formerly sunken cheek. "You grow more perfect every day."


	5. Chapter 5

Rey feels like a piece of livestock as Kylo appraises her plump form in his lap. He is so systematic in his approach to examining the extra flesh, he may as well have a scale and tape measure to finish up the simile. Smoothing over her thickened upper arms, even further thickened thighs, and the folds of fat on her sides, he pinches and pokes and squeezes and hums, pleased with what he finds.

He has been waiting to do this for a while, Rey realizes. Her full belly churns. Her mouth tastes like bile.

She crosses her arms in an attempt to keep her breasts away from his appraisal. They are big and formless and she forms deep cleavage with her self-hug. Gone are her days of near-nonexistent breasts, barely-there rises on top of her leanly muscled chest. She cannot imagine even beginning to run away, if she gets a chance—she does not remember at what point "when" turned into "if"—with such heavy, jiggling weights attached to her. It would probably hurt in addition to making it hard to breathe.

Rey recalls seeing a nerf for sale in Niima outpost once. In addition to the heat clearly being miserable for an animal not suited for it, she was making a series of pained noises due to her overfull udders. Rey swallows as she once again imagines being fat with his children in addition to her own excess flesh, complete with her breasts swollen to painful proportions; veiny, sore, full of milk to the point of bursting. She can't decide whether Kylo would let her suffer or if he'd milk her dry with his mouth.

"I'd crave the taste." Kylo's words are hot and wet in her ear.

He was in her mind, again, and she did not notice. It is as if she's getting used to it, or willfully ignoring it, or both, just like she had all this weight he caused her to gain. She hates him.

Rey's heart stops when Kylo shoves her arms apart and squeezes one of her breasts in his hand. The other latches on to the underside of her belly. For a long second, Rey is too shocked to react, then she grabs each of his wrists. Her attempts to pull him off just translate into pulls at her flesh as he sinks his fingertips further in, human meathooks. To top it off, Kylo rolls his hips and Rey is made aware of his rapidly hardening dick prodding her ass.

"What are you doing?" Her voice sounds rawer than she would have hoped when she speaks. "I thought you said you wouldn't—"

He had been so insistent that he would not force himself on her. That sex was not even a possibility. Not unless…

Kylo finishes the thought: "Not unless you stopped resisting. You want it, don't you?"

His voice has taken on that dreamy, mindlessly happy tone. In some ways it sounds scarier than when he is outright angry. He rubs his dick against her ass again. The layers of clothing serve as little comfort.

"You've come to realize you want my food and my attention and my mouth on your breasts and it terrifies you—"

His heartbeat and breathing are both quickening. She can feel them in the press of his chest against her back. Rey wrests herself out of his grasp with a twist and drops away from his hands, a move she had been forced to learn after being dragged into a grungy lap or two in Niima. She turns and backs away from him. Kylo stands, outstretched hands balling into fists that he lowers to his sides. His eyes are wolfish. Rey goes from the sensation of being a piece of livestock to him to a piece of prey, actively hunted and ready for death rather than pampered and used up until being killed, in a matter of seconds.

"I don't want anything to do with you. I never have," Rey says. "The minute I can, I'm leaving and going back to people who actually care about me."

It is the wrong thing to say. Kylo bares his teeth in an enraged look that distorts his entire face. Rey has to counter the impulse to take another step backwards.

"The Resistance?" He barks out something like a laugh. "They sent you into battle looking like you hadn't eaten in weeks."

"They tried to help me, but you—you had kriffed with my head. Every time I looked at food I thought of you trying to shove it down my throat. So I refused it, over and over. Unlike you, they weren't willing to force me."

"Are you trying to say it was my fault?" Kylo shakes his head and takes a step closer. "You were starving and I helped you. No one cares about you like I do. You can't leave me again. I won't allow it."

Pride be damned, Rey takes a step back and bumps up against the far wall. "Unless you plan to fatten me up until I can't move, that's not happening."

Kylo stretches a hand out, his face twisting further with ill intent. "That can be arranged."

The pull of the Force knocks her out, again, because he cannot seem to get enough of that cheap trick. She hangs on to consciousness just long enough to feel him catch her before she hits the floor. The slimy git all but cuddles her as he secures her in his grasp.

When Rey awakens, her wrists and ankles are bound again. She has been positioned sitting upright against the headboard so her belly bulges into her lap. She stares down at it rather than face her captor perched on the end of the bed but has her concentration broken when Kylo holds out a pie right under her nose.

"Think of it as an apology gift for our little fight," he says, as if they just had a minor spat in what was otherwise a decent relationship instead of the twisted reality.

The pie is three inches deep and smells citrusy. Rey's meal from only a short time before had packed her belly, but it has been enough time that handling dessert does not seem impossible.

Kylo scoops out a messy handful of crust and filling with his bare hand and holds it out to her. "Eat. Now."

Rey stares down dully. She considers spitting in his face. There would be no way to capitalize, but it might make her feel better for a second. The spite is fleeting and weak. All the same, the real token of her broken spirit is that she does not even bother trying to bite his hand when she bows her head and laps up the pie filling and the crumbly crust. She goes so far as to take his index and middle finger into her mouth and swirl her tongue around them to clean them. He lets her, neither of them considering she could bite them off right there.

The pie is tart and sweet and delicious. Rey wishes she tried it for the first time literally anywhere in the galaxy but here. She glances up at Kylo in time to see his tongue flick across his lips as if he had been the one to taste it.


	6. Chapter 6

Meat and breads and fruits and vegetables and sweets and Kylo Ren's touch. These are her life now.

She has nothing to look forward to except the promise that her long-abused palate will experience something new every day. Even that is soured by the mixed-in taste of Kylo's gloves.

Rey tries to focus on the pleasantness of the taste and the sensation of being full to counteract her abject misery. Kylo's feedings only get more and more flavorsome and filling. Pretending everything is okay should be easy. But nothing manages to entirely distract from the bruising pressure of the restraints, not even a belly stuffed full to bursting.

And oh, he's intent on having her that full at the end of every meal. It gets him off to see her so helpless. Rey is all too ready to appease him at this point. She's given up. She lays there like a bloated corpse and takes his abuse that he insists is care.

Kylo, meanwhile, looks better than when she first came to be in his capture. He's been eating better, sleeping better. Gone are the visible sharp daggers of cheekbones in his long face and the smudges of darkness beneath his eyes. His hair remains a thick, messy tangle, but it's far from greasy. There's bright color in his face and his eyes. He looks… healthier. At least physically.

Ironic. He probably thinks the same thing about her.

His prisoner's unresponsiveness seems to annoy him at some point. Kylo slaps her tight gut after he's fed her nothing but heavy, creamy desserts for dinner one night. It stings and makes her insides lurch. Rey moans a little, an exhalation of breath accompanied by an involuntary noise. It's a nothing-sound but Kylo of course fixates on it, tracing his thumb over her lips and whispering sickly-sweet nothings.

Then the creature cuddles with her.

Between her plumpness and his height and musculature it's a tight fit on the bed, but he manages to squeeze himself in by wrapping himself around her in a crushing hug from behind. One arm comes around to cradle the heft of her gut. He hooks his thumb into her navel.

Rey wonders when it got so deep. She's become numb to the changes in the ever-thickening slab of meat that is her body. It's only him that manages to cut so deeply into her senses.

Kylo tucks his head over her shoulder and nuzzles his cheek against hers. Rey suppresses a shiver at the sensation of the line of scar tissue.

And then he falls asleep.

Rey stares at the wall as she comprehends Kylo Ren's soft exhalations of breath against her neck, the rise and fall of his chest against her back. She turns her head ever-so-slightly and looks out of the corner of her eye at him to confirm it. Yes. He's sleeping. She turns her head back.

He so implicitly trusts that there is nothing she can do to harm him while she's restrained and swollen like a tick. And he'd be right. Rey's full stomach clenches with the mere idea of trying to fight him while she's like this.

There's nothing she can do, except listen to the Force. It thrums and she listens.

Rey brushes against his consciousness with her own. He's still alert enough that his grip on her tightens. His fingertips sink into her pliant flesh and he rolls his hips once, pressing his crotch to her ass. Rey suppresses the urge to vomit as he grinds his half-hard dick against one of the soft mounds. Even with layers of clothing, she's disgusted by the idea of him being stimulated by her body.

She thinks back to licking and kissing him and feels sick all over again.

Rey retracts her probe from his mind and Kylo relaxes. That plan is too risky, but the substitute seems too desperate. Still, she tries.

She shuts her eyes and focuses on the faces of the people she wants to contact.

Finn…

Luke…

Leia…

Anyone. Anyone that could save her from this monster. Rey reaches out from her prison, across the stars.

She can't tell whether or not the message gets through. She attempts to project where she is, but not knowing the name or location of the planet makes it difficult.

On some level it's comforting to know that there are people out there in the galaxy who are capable and willing to help her, nothing like when she'd been all alone on Jakku. On another she wishes she weren't so weak that she couldn't handle Kylo herself.

Rey sinks her teeth into her lower lip and blinks back tears. That isn't true. She had done it before. She was thinner, then, and more full of determination than despair, but she's capable of beating him. Even if that involves playing to his lust.

If she plays it right, she could even use her heavier body to her advantage.

Rey is very still as she begins to formulate a plan in her mind. She startles when one of Kylo's hands lifts off of her and waves once. The shackles click off of her wrists and ankles and fall away as he rolls her over to face him. Rey can feel her pulse throb in the formerly crushed areas as the blood flow increases. Kylo pays no mind to what will surely be bruises later, instead favoring rubbing her gut.

At that very inopportune time, Rey hiccups. Her viscera jolts. Everything from the chest down in her torso throbs. Kylo seems to find it endearing, judging by the smile he's making no effort to hide. That makes the pain sting even worse when she hiccups again. And again.

At some point, Kylo finally seems to realize she's hurting. "I'll take care of it."

His solution involves repeating what he'd done earlier: slapping her tender belly. After that final lurch and a painful belch, Rey's organs stop spasming. She pants hard.

That turns out to be a mistake, as Kylo surprises her by kissing her open mouth. Rey stiffens. He deepens the kiss, slipping his tongue between her teeth. She contemplates biting the slick, squirmy muscle invading her mouth and chewing it to a bloody pulp. Kylo would never breathe a word of fake compassion for her again.

Her fantasy doesn't seem so far off. He's practically teasing her with it, sticking the meat of his tongue right between her back molars, all but begging her to bite down-

Then he pulls away with a wet noise. Rey wonders if he heard the direction of her thoughts as she stares at the thin strand of spit connecting their mouths.

It snaps when he speaks. "Don't just lay there. Kiss me."

Rey hears his words for what they really are: love me. She doesn't want to meet that demand, can't, but for the sake of escaping she has to pretend.


	7. Chapter 7

She kisses him back. No, she does better. She pulls him down and devours him. Lips, teeth, tongue.

His moans reverberate through her skull. He adores this. Adores her.

Rey rolls over so that her plush weight is on top of his torso. She's crushing his organs, squeezing them. It's making him wheeze. Good. Maybe if she leans on him hard enough his ribs will break and puncture his rotten heart. Rey has to try and calm the anger churning in her own chest. She doesn't want him to sense her true intent.

Kylo seems to be far too wrapped up in his own emotions, particularly, predictably, overwhelming pleasure.

And something else. Something thick and rich and heavy, like a chocolate cake he fed her once. Love. He really truly believes that he loves her.

Rey tries not to feel sick as she cups his cheek. Kylo nuzzles against her hand, drinking in the fact that she's the one initiating contact. She traces the pad of her thumb up and down his cheek, right over the scar, contemplating shoving her nail into his eye.

Kylo's eyes flutter shut as she strokes his hair with her other hand. He's so overwhelmed by bliss. It would be so easy.

"Rey… my Rey…"

He nuzzles against her hand and kisses her wrist. Her pulse jumps beneath his soft lips.

"Do you love me?" He reopens his eyes and looks at her out of the corner of them.

"I love you. I've always loved you. It frightened me."

The words come far too easily. Rey tries not to dwell on why.

He sits up. "Don't be afraid of me."

Stars, he's so wrapped up in his delusion. She's always been terrified of him and a few words won't change anything. She's trembling. She can't help it.

Kylo he pets her side, fingers tracing over the rolls of flesh gathered there. "Would you feel better if I got you more to eat?"

Rey's stomach aches, but there's only one right answer: "Yes."

He seems offended by her terseness, lips thinning and fingers getting a bit rougher. He grabs a hold of a roll of flesh that has formed beneath her breasts and squeezes it.

Rey swallows her pride, lodging it next to the big meal she had already eaten, and says in a low voice, "Yes. I'm still hungry. I'm ravenous."

She takes his hand, prying his claws free of the soft fat, and places it right on the center of her tight belly.

"Can't you feel it rumbling? A scavenger's stomach is never satisfied."

It's rumbling with pained, overworked digestion, but he seems more than willing to accept the dramatization.

"You were right. I need you to help me." Her mouth feels like it's full of grit as she adds, "I need you to feed me."

Kylo's eyes are dark. It takes him licking his lips and giving her belly a firm rub before she realizes it's due to want and not anger.

"So you've finally come to your senses."

He gives her a chaste peck on the lips, then another, then a tight, squeezing hug. It might be sweet if it were from anyone but him. As things are, Rey feels victim to a constrictor.

Kylo releases her from his grasp and leaves the bed, then goes out the door. He forgets to lock her back up. A mistake.

Rey waits for only a moment before getting off of the bed. She discovers as she walks that she's waddling, thighs brushing up against each other and sure to chafe in time. The alien sensation makes her ill, but not as ill as she's about to be.

She goes to the corner and jams two fingers to the very back of her mouth. The soft give of her throat and wobbling uvula meet her sharp, untrimmed nails. It doesn't take much—just the thought of Kylo filling her up to the point that she explodes—before she retches on the floor. She hunches over as she does so, one hand balled over her convulsing belly while the other gets covered in vomit.

It's disgusting and exhausting, but ultimately she's better for it. No longer is she weighed down and made lethargic by her forced indulgence. Evidence of Kylo's care is a putrid mess on the floor (and clinging to swollen globs of fat on her body, but she's trying not to think about that).

Rey rubs threads of spittle and bile off of her chin with her messy hand before cleaning it off on the bedcovers. Then she goes to stand next to the door, chest heaving. For what feels like days she stands stationary, empty stomach quailing. And then she hears it: the thud of Kylo's boots, louder than her pulse pounding in her temples.

She can smell something wafting under the door, drowning out the stench of vomit with warm sugar and fruit. There's an accompanying scent of what she recognizes to be red meat. Probably cooked rare, oozing blood, just the way she likes it.

Her stomach growls, already recovered from her throwing up and ready to be stuffed again. Saliva drenches Rey's tongue, puddling at its center. Maybe emptying her stomach wasn't a good idea. She's so hungry and it smells like a meal she'd enjoy. Kylo might be gentler with her than usual after he sees that she got sick in the corner. He'd rub away the pain as she eats and call her "sweetheart" and—

And keep her here forever! Remembrance is ice water in Rey's skull. The cost of being his prisoner forever is not worth being spoiled with nice meals and the touch of one she hates.

Rey shakes her head and grits her teeth. She's not going to be ruled by the appetite he had instilled in her. She's not a kriffing happabore.

Rey's attention is drawn back to the door when she hears it unlock with a hard click. The door opens and Kylo steps in.

The trick she ends up using to get the drop on him is nothing short of juvenile—sticking her foot out so he'll trip over her ankle—but it works. She had her parts of her haul stolen from her as she walked out of starships on more than one occasion the same way.

He has the promised food with him when he goes down, his huge body hitting the floor with an almighty slam, face-first. Something glass shatters. There's a tart crushed to a thick, red goo that splatters on the floor next to his head, making Rey think for a split second that she had bashed Kylo's brains out.

She's not so lucky. He starts to haul himself up, hands slipping and scrabbling to support himself amidst the mess. His nose has blood streaming from one nostril and is bent as a result of what Rey suspects is the second time it has broken in his life.

He turns his head to look at her midway through getting up to give her a look of utter hurt and betrayal that crushes something in the chambers of Rey's heart. Then his expression turns into a more familiar one, filled with hot-blooded rage, and he reaches for her. His snarl is highlighted with the blood that had streamed from his nose and onto his teeth.

Rey doesn't give him the chance to grab her, instead tackling him. She makes sure he feels every pound he forced onto her. Her heavy belly and breasts bulge over the sides of his broad back, making contact the floor when he does with a hard smack. It sends stinging, bruising shocks through the areas that hit; she can only imagine what he is feeling with her added weight on top.

One thing's for sure: his diaphragm is crushed in an instant. Rey hears his breath leave him in a rasp. Kylo's huge, hard body squirms like a dying rabbit's in the wreckage of food, powerful limbs rendered flailing and useless.

It's pathetic, but Rey can save her pity for those who deserve it. She reaches down to knot her fingers in his hair at the back of his head, preparing to slam his face into the floor again, harder than before, and end it.

Before she manages it, she feels a hard wall of the Force against her body. She tumbles to the side, off of Kylo and into some of the meat she had smelled earlier. Rey makes a noise of disgust. She was right about it being cooked rare; the blood oozes around her arm as she crushes it.

In mere moments, Kylo is on his hands and knees, breathing through his mouth.

"I..." He coughs, then inhales again. "I..."

Rey shifts away from him, sensing the Force gathering around him in dark droves.

Kylo turns his head. "I will see you a bedridden blob before I let you escape me again."

"No," Rey says, but she's afraid all the same.

She edges further away, very aware of how confined the space of the room is.

Kylo shudders out a groan, then begins to crawl towards her. "You think the Resistance wants you back? You think anyone does? Your own family left you to starve, Rey."

His words press down on a bruise that never healed. It throbs.

"Don't." Rey hits the wall. "Don't you dare talk about them."

Kylo reaches her. He lifts a hand, then strokes the curve of her soft cheek with his fingertips. It somehow hurts worse than if he had hit her like she expected.

"You know it's true." His eyes are soft again, despite everything. "You know I'm the only one in the galaxy who truly cares for you. Loves you."

Rey looks into his eyes for a long moment. Then, slowly, she leans into his touch. Kylo smiles.

Then she bites him. She sinks her teeth into the palm and dorsal of his hand, clamping her jaws until she manages to cut deep. She pierces the thick material of his glove. Kylo howls even before she tastes blood, and he screams after that. Bones crunch. His free hand sinks into her blubbery sides, the meat of her arm, the other side of her face, trying to get her to let go.

She eventually does, when her jaws begin to ache, and shoves him away from her with a Force push of her own. Kylo hits the opposite wall. He collapses to the floor on his side, landing partway in the puddle of her vomit, splattering it.

"Why? Why?" He shakes his head, staring at her, listless. "Why won't you stop fighting me?"

"I'll never stop," Rey says, supporting herself against the wall as she stands. "You can try to change me, weaken me, but inside, I'll always be fighting your control. Not even your Force powers can change that."

Kylo shakes his head again, lips trembling. Tears fill her captor's eyes and stream sideways off of his face. He sobs, curling in on himself with his injured hand against his chest. Again, he's a pitiful creature, but not pitiful enough to compel her to stay.

Rey goes to the unlocked door and opens it, only to hesitate right before she leaves. She kneels and sinks her fingers into the topmost part of the broken fruit tart on the floor. It's still warm. The berries are tart and juicy and the crust buttery. Rey eats at her own pace for the first time in a while, slowly, savoring it.

And then, because he still has room for spite even amidst his tears, Kylo hisses, "Does it taste good, piggy?"

Rey walks to where he lays. Stands over him for a moment. Then she kicks Kylo in the face, knocking him out.

"Delicious," she says, sucking the red juice from the tip of her thumb.

The Resistance arrives soon after Rey leaves the archaic castle Kylo had been keeping her in. Leia received her telepathic distress call in the Force and sent for her to be rescued some time ago; it is only now that they find her.

Rey is numb all over as she considers that if she had just waited a bit longer, she could have been freed from imprisonment without having to confront Kylo. She reassures herself that it's better to have him incapacitated as the Resistance fighters cuff him and drag him onboard.

She tries not to mind when her rescuers keep staring at her, so wide that she takes up a seat and a half onboard the starship. Tries. Mostly wraps her arms around herself in a hug as if that will hide anything.

When they arrive at the base, Finn stares at her the same way as the others. But it's only for a moment. Then he's hugging her and telling her how worried he was and crying into her shoulder and Rey knows what real love feels like. She starts to cry, too, unaware of how much she missed her friend's touch until she has it again. Now it's hard to let go.

Finn doesn't ask what's happened to her body, how she went from anemic to obese, so she doesn't tell him yet. The trauma is too fresh. She doesn't want to tell anyone, not even him. She especially doesn't want to tell the general what new twisted thing her son had done on top of all of the others.

She'll have to tell eventually, but it's okay for now. Everyone is willing to give her space.

That day, Rey eats in the chow hall, a reasonable meal at a reasonable pace, and has a stimulating conversation with BB-8 about coding. It almost feels normal, except for when it doesn't. She'll take a bite and taste Kylo's glove. She swallows anyway.

Days pass. Rey starts to train with her lightsaber again, trying to adapt to the changes wrought in her. Like she always has.

And then Finn tells her he heard that the latest prisoner has gone on a hunger strike.


End file.
